Background

Prostate cancer remains to be a leading cause of cancer-related death in men. Most prostate cancer–related deaths are due to advanced disease, which results from any combination of lymphatic, blood, or contiguous local spread. Therefore, the presence or absence of metastases is a determining factor for prostate cancer prognosis.

Identifying the molecular mechanisms involved in metastasis of prostate cancer can potentially direct therapy and may result in the introduction of new targets for therapy. Molecular profiling using multiple platforms is a comprehensive approach in identifying molecular aberrations that could be targeted by (1) agents considered standard of care for prostate cancer, (2) FDA-approved agents used in other solid tumors, (3) novel targeted therapies currently in clinical trial or (4) combination treatment. We sought to determine theranostic biomarker differences between primary (P) and metastatic (M) specimens, with subset analysis for differences between metastatic sites, including the most common sites of metastasis: bone (B), lymph nodes (LN) or visceral organs (V).